Love the song #5: When Heroes Go Down

Rock on: the minimalist, industrial-style setting for the video of
When Heroes Go Down perfectly reflected the tone of the song

It was difficult to restrict myself to a single song from Suzanne Vega's great catalogue to honour as the first to feature in this occasional 'Love the Song' series.

However, I've gone for one of her more unusual outings, When Heroes Go Down. It is probably the most out-and-out rocking number she has released. And at just under two minutes long, it is also one of the briefest slices of pop/rock.

It was the fourth and final single from the 99.9F album of 1992, which itself was a huge departure for Vega, breaking away from the folk-pop of her first three albums. The album featured industrial-sounding beats and percussion and some stark lyricism and vocals, and sent the American singer-songwriter into new territory. It was a bold step, and came two years after her famed song Tom's Diner had been sampled and repackaged by the British dance music duo DNA, sending it to the top of the charts.

The musical experimentation of 99.9F produced a host of memorable tracks, including the title song 99.9F, Blood Makes Noise, and In Liverpool.

What I love about When Heroes Go Down is its driving rock beat, the straightforward, powerful lyrics, Vega's assured vocals, and the way it manages to squeeze in a momentary change of pace, even in the rarified space of its 120 seconds entirety. In fact, my only complaint is that it is too short. I'd happily listen to another few minutes of this rocker.

Here is the official video for the song:

The Last Jedi misses old Star Wars beat

Splitting opinion: The Last Jedi

Along with many supportive comments, there have been some pretty harsh things posted online by moviegoers distressed about the latest Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi. Perhaps like no other episode in the 40-year old franchise, Episode VIII has split fans' opinions. Why is it so divisive - and is it justified?

It is almost a full week since I watched the film, and still I'm conflicted about its merits. On one level it was a good, standard movie - a little over-long, but entertaining. But at a deeper level it did not feel like a Star Wars film. There was an emptiness in the storytelling. It lacked the soul and heart that defined the original trilogy and, to a lesser extent, the prequels.

Having allowed my thoughts to settle during the past week, I rate The Last Jedi as a 2.5 out of 5. It is an adequate film, but somewhat lacking. My views on the positives and negatives of the film are below.

SPOILER ALERT: The remainder of this post discusses aspects of The Last Jedi, including plot and characters. If you intend to watch the film and don't want to know what is in it, read no further.

The positives:

1. The cinematography on the whole is well done and gives the movie a quality aesthetic; many of the sets and location shots are a joy to view and well framed. 
2. Likewise, the space battles are more interesting than in some of the previous installments. The battle engagements are shorter, more focused, and the special effects are beyond fault.
3. The interaction between Luke and Rey is fascinating and insightful, up to a point - because there was plenty of scope for more to have been achieved here - in particular in relation to Luke's torment and why he had taken the path he did. Mark Hamill's acting is magnificent and one of the film's highlights.
4. And then there is Kylo Ren's uneven relationship with the dark side of the Force, so dynamically portrayed by Adam Driver that he overshadows Rey as the most interesting protagonist on the screen. 
5. The developing story between Kylo and Rey is now clearly the signature theme for the trilogy, and it made for the most compelling on-screen interactions.
6. The throne room showdown was memorable (albeit, with the proviso below regarding Snoke).
7. Leia's no-nonsense final flourish that puts Poe in his place, twice.
8. A blisteringly brilliant standoff as Luke faces Kylo and The First Order's ground attack AT-ATs.

The negatives:

1. There's no real hero. Rey is surely meant to be the heroine of the piece, but she is unengaging and that is worrying two films into a trilogy. Her background and deeper motivations remain opaque. It is hard to really care for a character that you know so little about. The classic hero's journey is absent from Rey's character. All the interesting development stages have been left out. Also, she lacks emotional empathy, other than the edgy interplay with Kylo. It might be that this is all by design. We have one film left to find out.
2. As mentioned in the positive list Carrie Fisher's performance of Leia was fine, but there was potential for more. For example, when the communications operator reported that the call of help had been received at the outer rim but no one was responding, had it been shown, the sadness on Leia's face could have been a showstopper, particularly when immediately followed by Luke stepping out from the shadows. As for Leia's flying through space scene, the less said, the better. I'm fine with the concept - but what we got looked ridiculous.
3. The new charactors have not developed in any compelling ways. Finn looked the most promising, but his side adventure with Rose was underwhelming and a drag to the main narrative. Poe has yet to fulfill the potential he showed in The Force Awakens.
4. Chewbacca was a bit player. The meeting with Luke could have given something; that moment when Luke realised Han was no longer around. But the moment was squashed.
5. Luke's finale was uneven. There was the brilliance of his emergence from the smoke during the AT-AT standoff, but his ultimate departure missed a beat. Considering the film's nondescript ending, it was a shame it did not climax at, or around, that moment. If only the movie had flipped to the Millennium Falcon departing with the rebels and then back to Luke on the rock, the sunset, the empty cloak. End.
6. The bad guys. Are there any? General Hux is a shallow, ineffectual baddie who from the get-go is the fall-guy/punchbag for Snoke and Kylo. As for Snoke, so much potential thrown away with his highly anti-climatic demise. Who was he, where did he come from? Perhaps there's a bubblegum card that can help.
7. The film creaked under the sheer weight of its palette of characters. I had a hard job feeling connected or invested in the fate of most of them. The scripting left out the humanising elements.
8. Plot holes. So many, including a slow-motion space chase waiting for ships to run out of gas when it would appear simple enough to have a few star-cruisers head them off. And the casino subplot was weak and added little value to the main narrative.

Reflecting back two years to The Force Awakens, that was a fun and action-packed romp. Yes, it did retread past movies in the series, but it could be forgiven this as it was the scene setter for the new trilogy. The Last Jedi should have been the consolidating episode, but it failed to establish an emotional tether with the main protagonists.
The handling of Luke's character is questionable, and Mark Hamill has said so in blunt terms in interviews during the past two years. While I acknowledge the realigning of his character arc is a valid development (though not the only one), it cries out for some exposition. The Last Jedi missed that opportunity. I hope the next and final installment rounds things out.

Finally, I question the decision to not have the trilogy planned in some semi-structured way. I have read that director Rian Johnson scrapped an outdated draft of what Episode VIII might look like, and wrote his own version picking up from where JJ Abrams left the storyline and characters at the end of The Force Awakens. This "pass the parcel" approach to story sculpting must have some bearing on the disjointed feel of The Last Jedi.
And the film was longer than it needed to be. A sharper focus and editing would have made a big difference.

As I watched the quiet departure of the audience from the cinema at one of the early sold-out showings, to me it was a sign that this movie lacked the knockout stuff that many have come to expect from the Star Wars universe. As I mentioned earlier, I left the cinema not feeling that I'd witnessed a Star Wars film. It wasn't the same. There were too many diversions, too little depth, and too many unsatisfying gaps. It may be that Episode IX will deliver the answers that will cast The Last Jedi in a more favourable light. All now hangs on that 2019 release. Back to you Mr Abrams.

To end with here is a video of Mark Hamill expressing his views on The Last Jedi version of Luke:



And here is a trailer, and a very good one, for The Last Jedi....

A life lesson from my fastest half-marathon

Thirty years ago: crossing the finish line of my fastest half-marathon.

Five miles into the race and with another eight remaining, I was having doubts about my ability to stick with the group of runners directly in front of me.

Up ahead the lead runners were out of sight. I was tagging along in the chasing group - and I do mean tagging along.

The group of five were doing consistent six-minute miles. So was I. The difference was I was hanging off the back of the pack, relying on sheer willpower to prevent myself from being dropped. Yes, I had a degree of confidence to stick with the pace, but it was wafer-thin.

Three months earlier I had barnstormed a half-marathon in 1 hour 19 minutes - taking 13 minutes off my previous best. However, that confidence boost had been dented when, two weeks before the current race, I'd run another half-marathon while recovering from a bad cold. I finished in 1:28 - not bad by previous standards, but way off my new record.

Now I was struggling to stay with the six-minute mile pace. I mentally set myself a target of reaching five miles in 30 minutes, after which I'd allow myself to fall back to a more comfortable pace. But there was a problem.

The group of runners were taking it in turns to act as front man - taking on the pace-setting duties for the others then switching over after a mile to let the next man do his bit.  I'd been so preoccupied trying to keep up at the back of the pack I didn't notice that I was next in line to pull my weight up front.

The conditions were perfect for long distance running. There was virtually no breeze, it was cool and the open countryside was shrouded by a thin mist. We had reached five miles bang on target. That's when the others called on me to get in place up front and do my shift. I had a choice to either buckle and fade away like a douche bag, or step up and lead the group through mile six.

Who's next? I'm hanging at the back of the chasing group,
shortly before taking over the paceman duties at five miles.

So there I was, very much feeling like the odd man out at the back. Doing your fair share of the pacesetting duties when required was an unspoken rule of the sport. I moved to the lead and decided that as bad as I'd been struggling, I would put in my one-mile shift to keep that six-minute mile canter going, even if emptied my reserves and punished me for the remainder of the race.

I concentrated on my running gait and cadence, making sure it did not slip from the pace I'd been following. There was a sense of honour in fulfilling the lead runner duty; carrying the group one mile closer to the finish. I didn't want to let them down, or require them to take over before I had fulfilled my mile. It would hurt but I'd stick it out, come what may. Then something happened.

As I pushed on, eager to be as competent a pacesetter as the others, I began to feel better. My running gained a bit more bounce. Before I knew it, the six miles marker appeared and I prepared to relinquish my spot at the front to allow the next man to do his pace shift.

Two things had happened during that mile. My watch showed I'd gone faster than a six-minute mile, it was about 10 seconds quicker. I glanced over my shoulder to see who was preparing to take the lead duties and saw the group of runners were no longer in a pack. They had started to string out, they were breathing heavier and none were near enough to take over the pace. I was feeling better, so I stayed at the front and added a second mile of pacesetting.

What had happened was the opposite to what I had feared. Rather than slowing down, I'd found the experience of being in front had lifted me. From somewhere inside I'd been able to tap into extra energy. It was a similar sensation to taking part in team relays, where a sense of duty to do all possible not to let down the others resulted in a level of effort that many times surpassed what might have been achieved as an individual.

I'd only slightly overcooked the pace in that first mile of pacesetting. The next mile also came in at around 5 mins 50 secs. I looked around to see if the others were ready to take back the pace role, but the group was now strung out in a line. My reinvigorated legs had taken the pace marginally beyond the fixed effort of the opening five miles. I pushed on, looking to see how much longer I could sustain that level, and with each mile completed my confidence grew that a personal best could be on the cards. It was. I ran beneath the finish line clock in 1:17:25.

During the next 12 years I ran more sub-1:20 half marathons, but none as swiftly as that one exactly 30 years ago this weekend.

As for the other runners in the group; well, the race changed complexion when my pacing altered the six-minute miles to 5:50 miles. They had been settled on running the half-marathon in the high 1:18s or low 1:19s, but most of them were pulled through faster as they followed my lead - indeed, one is seen about 100 metres behind at the finish line photograph. I feel they got an unexpected benefit too.

So what did I learn from it? It taught me that even when feeling tired and wanting to back off and sit back, doing the opposite can sometimes have a cathartic effect; pushing though the barrier of discomfort led to a place of more strength than I thought existed. And secondly, I learnt that taking on a dutiful role gave an added inner drive to succeed.

Tom Petty's many moments of brilliance

Modern classic: Tom Petty at Ventura Boulevard, San Fernando Valley, in
the 1989 video for Free Fallin'. The song mentioned many "Valley" locations

Tom Petty was one of the great modern singer songwriters of America. His output around the late 1980s and early 1990s was stunning, and it is this period that I most associate with his music.

Petty, 66, died in Santa Monica on Monday after a heart attack. Here are two personal vignettes relating to Petty and his music.

The catchy melodies and lyrics of his biggest hits, particularly the two I rate most highly, Learning to Fly and Free Fallin', were firmly etched in my mind by 1995 - the year I enrolled for a semester of study at a Los Angeles college in the San Fernando Valley.

The relevancy of that is Petty's own connection to "The Valley." For many years he lived in the neighbourhood of Encino, and some of his songs and videos show or reference places in the San Fernando Valley - the vast metropolitan sprawl that is separated from downtown Los Angeles by the Hollywood Hills.

On my twice daily route to college through the neighbourhood of Reseda, or anytime I travelled along Ventura Boulevard (which passed one block away from the college), I could not help but hear Free Fallin' playing my head. Reseda, Ventura Boulevard and nearby Mulholland are all mentioned in the song, which was only a few years old at that time. The song's lyrics created a degree of comforting familiarity with my immediate surroundings, even though I was 7,000 miles from home.

Watch for the UFO: Tom Petty in the classic video for Learning to Fly

Rewinding eight years to 1987, and an October evening just outside the city of Birmingham, England. I was at the National Exhibition Centre to see a sell-out concert at the immense indoor venue.

Of the three artists on the bill I was familiar with two; the headliner Bob Dylan and the opening act Roger McGuinn, the former lead singer and guitarist of The Byrds. Sandwiched between the two was a group I'd never heard of called Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I was there to see Dylan. The fact that McGuinn was also on the bill was a bonus. And I figured if Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were touring with Dylan and had been given a higher billing than McGuinn, then they must be pretty good.

McGuinn was on form, although his short set barely allowed him time to play more than a few of the jangle pop hits that made The Byrds famous in the 1960s, one being a cover version of Dylan's Mr Tamborine Man. This contrasted with Dylan, who barely lit up the stage with his disconnected performance.

Which brings me to Petty. That evening I had no expectations and so the surprise turned out to be all the greater. He and his band gave a performance between McGuinn's set and Dylan's that turned out to be the most enjoyable of the night. The rock-pop songs soared with an energy that seemed to bounce off the walls. Petty was having the time of his life performing on the same stage as two of his musical idols, and he was doing all he could to share some of that zest and fun with everyone in the audience of 15,000 - and succeeding.

At the time, the songs I consider to be Petty's finest had yet to be recorded, but during the next few years he would release I Won't Back Down, featuring George Harrison and Ringo Starr (Starr was only in the the video), the aforementioned Learning to Fly and Free Fallin', and was a founding member of the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys, along with Dylan, Harrison, Roy Orbison and ELO's Jeff Lynne.

The Traveling Wilbury's two albums spawned hits such as Handle With Care and End of the Line. It is fitting that Petty became a founding member of that short-lived group filled with musical legends, because he came to the world of music first and foremost as a fan. Just before his eleventh birthday he shook hands with Elvis Presley, then two years later he watched the US television debut appearance of The Beatles, at which point he decided he wanted to pursue a career as a musician in a band. It wasn't until the late 1970s that Petty and the Heartbreakers secured a contract with a major record label, but they quickly rose to success and reached a creative pinnacle in the late 80s and early 90s.

Petty was on the cusp of his greatest success when I saw him in concert in 1987. In the years that immediately followed I watched out for his records, and that proved to be perfect timing to catch the richest treasures of his career. Many of his American rock-pop classics have endured for a quarter-century and will last much longer.

Farewell Mr Petty, and thank you for the music.

Below: The official videos for Free Fallin' and Learning to Fly.





Further reading: An interview with the girl from the Free Fallin' video (and what she is doing now), can be found on this blog

Lana Del Rey's 'Lust for Life'

Memorising songs: Lana Del Rey singing in the video for Love,
the opening track of her album Lust for Life

It is almost a decade since I last bought an album by an artist I'd never heard of before.

Towards the end of last month I purchased Lust for Life, by a singer whose name I had to double check.

I was sitting under a beach shade, interviewing an empath, when one of my ears tuned into the background music being played at the beach bar. I was focused on the interview, and what the empath had to say was fascinating - it resulted in an interesting article. But try as I might, the unusual song quietly playing in the background was also incessantly vying for a corner of my attention.

The tune was reminiscent of Radiohead's Creep, so much so that I thought it might be a cover version, yet the words were unfamiliar. There was a quality in the singing that drew me in. The song ended and I made a mental note to find out who it had been. After concluding my interview I strolled to the beach bar and asked about the track. The singer was Lana Del Rey - a name that meant nothing to me.

New music: Lana Del Rey on the cover of Lust for Life.

Living on an island and not being tuned into TV, radio or keeping up with many other cultural portals, I had to go and Google this mysterious (to me) singer. That's when I found out she was one of the most successful singers of the past five or six years.
Who knew? Everyone else, apparently.

The album playing at the beach was new and had only been released two weeks earlier. I found a video for the opening track on YouTube. Love was mesmorising, as was the video which had evident shades of M83's We Own the Sky. With my curiosity now further heightened, I bought Del Rey's Lust for Life.

With no previous exposure to her music I could only evaluate the album on what I found. I had no preconceived ideas; to me she was a new artist emerging from a void. The album is a refreshing and intriguing collection of songs and styles. The first three tracks, Love, Lust for Life, and 13 Beaches are standouts. The quality hardly slips, but as I got into the second half of the record the seam of gold broadened with ever more beautifully crafted and delivered songs, such as God Bless America - And All the Beautiful Women in It, Heroin, Change and Get Free (the song I heard at the beach).

Five of the tracks feature collaborations with the likes of Weeknd, A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, and Stevie Nicks. There is a mixture of styles and influences sprinkled in, particularly on the two tracks with A$AP Rocky. And then there is the timeless, poignant beauty of Tomorrow Never Came, a song co-written and performed with Sean Ono Lennon.

Del Rey's vocal delivery and lyricism is a refreshing break from usual. I'm thankful to have discovered Lust for Life. Someone remarked that empaths tune-in to the feelings and thoughts of the person they are speaking to. I'm not sure what the empath at the beach might have deduced as my attention was semi-diverted to the music drifting across the sand, but I suspect he might have wondered why he could sense so many musical notes dancing around my head.

Eating Clouds (2008 edition) being retired

Two editions: The original Eating Clouds, on the left, was released in
late 2008. It was followed in 2009 by a more compact edition.

The original edition of Eating Clouds is being retired. That is, the 2008 version published through Lulu will no longer be available.

That edition contained the first version of the later stand-alone novel Dolphin Girl.

But don't worry if you haven't yet picked up a copy of Eating Clouds, because the smaller edition, published in 2009 through CreateSpace, will continue to be the available worldwide.

The later edition is by far the more popular seller and the most widely distributed; the main difference between it and the original is the absence of Dolphin Girl. Removing the novel meant the smaller version could be retailed at a more attractive price, and also made sense as I had started to work on an expanded version of Dolphin Girl, which eventually was released in its own right in 2015.

I have decided to discontinue the bulky, Lulu edition of Eating Clouds as it makes no sense for the outdated version of Dolphin Girl to still be out there. Online retailers such as Amazon are likely to have a few of the old editions in stock, but once they are gone only be the compact edition will be available. As of yet, there is no e-book version of Eating Clouds.

'Alice' novel: the first draft

Raw story: at a rate of 500 words per day, it took just under
three months to complete the first draft of Alice Out Of Time.

The first draft of Alice Out Of Time is complete, stretching to approximately 52,000 words.

Since the beginning of June I've written 500 words each morning until the story I envisaged was fully captured.

There are probably as many different writing process as there are people in the world. I'm using this update to document my writing regime.

With Alice, the end goal is to have a final draft of 80,000 words, which is pretty much the standard-size for a novel. At this stage I'm confident that will be achieved. The first draft is the story in skeleton form - the basic scaffolding around which the deeper details will be placed.

In this raw and basic form the story pacing is super-fast. Keeping the momentum flowing through every scene is important. Other than two or three key characters, everyone else is referred to simply as "man" or "woman" or (spoiler alert) "woman in the coffee shop". Buildings are largely described as "building" and some of the towns and places have yet to be named. All those things get filled in during subsequent re-writes.

The first run-through is all about the core story and finding out if it works and delivers. I wrote every morning when I got up, straight out of bed. There was no stopping for breakfast or internet news. The first priority was to fulfill the 500 words for the day. Which usually took between 30 and 45 minutes.

And yes, it was every single day. Keeping the momentum up helped with the flow, and meant my mind was always engaged in the story and thinking of ways to express the next development. There was no stopping to correct grammar or spelling. And sometimes I would change the direction of a scene mid-stream, or write it fresh from a different angle the next day (but not deleting the first attempt - just writing the new version straight beneath).

I wrote the story out of sequence, opting to follow a single main character to the end, and then doing the same for the next main character. The exception to this rule was when it was necessary to have chief characters interacting in the same scenes.

There was no writing done on a computer. Instead, I wrote on a Neo2, a small, battery-powered word processor, which you can see in the background of the photograph. This removed distractions. The Neo2 is purely a word processor. It has no internet capabilities, so there was no temptation to check e-mails, social media, etc.

Secondly, the Neo2 screen shows only four lines of text. So that did away with the temptation of scrolling back through writing from previous days to tidy up spellings, grammar or elements of the story.

Of course, I did not start each day with no idea where the story was going. Because while the first draft was written in less than three months, it took close to eight months to work through the story idea, plot, and character arcs. Only once I was certain most of it would fit together did I begin. That provided a guide to show where the story was meant to be going each day. There was flexibility to add in ideas, providing they meshed with the end goal, and that happened. There was enough ambiguity in the penciled framework to allow for new moments of inspiration to fill the gaps as they appeared.

But the 11 months of pre-planning and writing is not the whole journey to date. Even before the lengthy framework building, the genesis of Alice and the mentally piecing together of the jigsaw puzzle to make the story work - or at least feasible enough to attempt - goes back a few years.

Alice has now crossed the first milestone. The second draft is about to get underway with a similar writing regime to the first. I will post future progress updates.